Should Student Athletes be Paid? Should the student-athlete receive pay for his athletic performance for the school? This argument has been the topic of debate for many years. Some argue that the student-athlete receives a full scholarship, and this should be his total pay. After all, receiving a college degree should be the player’s primary concern. The point has to be made, however, that the scholarship does not cover all of the student-athletes’ living expenses (Meshefejian). When the student cannot pay his extra expenses, they either chose to leave college or move on to professional sports. Leaving school for any reason eliminates the whole purpose of attending college, which is to receive a degree. The college and the NCAA receive enormous amounts of money from the student-athlete’s sports ability. Because the student-athlete provides the college with such a large sum of income, the student-athletes should be given enough scholarship funds to pay the total cost of attending the school which would provide the student-athlete with a diploma and a degree.
The college, as well as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), earns substantial amounts of money from the sports programs at most colleges. In the 2013-2014 basketball season, NCAA received over $1.15 billion dollars just from advertising sales during the tournament(Benedykcik). Mike Benedykcik further reports in his article, The Blue Line: College Athletes Should be Paid that the University of Alabama made over $143 billion in 2014 from their football program alone. NCAA and the colleges are making tremendous amounts of money while the student-athlete is having to borrow money to help with his living expenses to play for the school (Meshefejian). Since the NCAA and some of the colleges are making so much money, some of those earnings should be given to the student-athlete in